The payout to Tesla, where Musk currently serves as CEO, would come just months after he spent millions to help elect Trump in the 2024 election. Following the election, Trump named Musk to head his Department of Government Efficiency, which has been harassing federal workers and rooting around in sensitive government systems for weeks.
DOGE has been used to purge federal workers and suspend key agencies like the United States Agency for International Development despite lacking congressional authority to do so. In a call to the World Government Summit in Dubai on Thursday, Musk threatened that he would "delete entire agencies."
The public doesn't like what they see from Musk and DOGE. A recent poll from Economist/YouGov found that 52 percent of respondents view Musk very unfavorably or somewhat unfavorably, and 63 percent think he has a lot of influence over Trump.
Despite the very clear potential for massive corruption, the White House has claimed that Musk will voluntarily excuse himself from any possible conflicts of interest that arise. But Musk has spent years already intertwined with the federal government thanks to the billions in federal contracts tied up in his other company, SpaceX.